In this photo, a family camps near aside the Maule river in Constitucion, Chile, Wednesday, March 3, 2010.
Photo: Luis Hidalgo, AP Photo/Luis Hidalgo

The 8.8-magnitude earthquake that struck central Chile on Feb. 27,...

In 2011, a Japan earthquake and tsunami broke off two icebergs the size of Manhattan from the Sulzberger Ice Shelf in Antarctica.

In this March 13, 2011 file photo, a ship washed away by a tsunami sits amid debris in Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture after Japan's biggest recorded earthquake hit its eastern coast. The stranded fishing boat that became a symbol of the devastation of Japan's 2011 tsunami has long divided a northeastern coastal city - between those who wanted to keep it as a monument of survival and those who wanted a painful reminder gone.
Photo: AP

In 2011, a Japan earthquake and tsunami broke off two icebergs the...

In 2011, a Japan earthquake and tsunami broke off two icebergs the size
of Manhattan from the Sulzberger Ice Shelf in Antarctica.

In this photo, a man rides a bicycle by ships lying on the wharf in Yotsukura port in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, on April 6, 2011, top, about one month after a devastating earthquake and tsunami hit Japan's northeast on Mach 11, 2011.
Photo: AP Photo/Kyodo News, AP

In 2011, a Japan earthquake and tsunami broke off two icebergs the...

A large earthquake in Maule, Chile, caused ice near the Ellsworth Mountains, Antarctica to snap and pop.
Photo: Google Maps

A large earthquake in Maule, Chile, caused ice near the Ellsworth...

A large earthquake in Maule, Chile, caused ice near the Ellsworth Mountains, Antarctica to snap and pop.
Photo: Google Maps

SAN ANTONIO -- A large earthquake in Maule, Chile, caused ice in Antarctica -- on the other side of the globe -- to snap and pop on the southernmost continent on Earth, a report says.

The powerful 8.8-magnitude earthquake, which hit Feb. 27, 2010, was felt as far away as Argentina and Peru, and caused an icequake on Antarctica, the frozen continent which contains the South Pole, according to a study in the Nature Geoscience journal released Sunday.

The same situation occurred in 2011, when a Japan earthquake and tsunami broke off two icebergs the size of Manhattan from the Sulzberger Ice Shelf, an article by Live Science states.

The icequakes can last anywhere from 1 to 10 seconds, and the triggers can open and close fractures, tear away glaciers, cause water runoff and calving, the article states.

An article by Science Magazine states that if a powerful tsunami wave hits an ice shelf in Antarctica, it can push and pull on the ice, causing fractures or calves.

"Regular icequakes probably occur all the time in Antarctica and other polar regions," Zhigang Peng, a seismologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, told Live Science. "What we found is that they occurred more during the seismic waves of the Maule event."

Only Rayleigh waves can cause icequakes in Antarctica, which travel close to the grounds like continuous waves.

Peng and his colleagues, including Jacob Walter, a research scientist at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas, also are researching if other powerful earthquakes have caused icequakes.

"At this point we cannot say definitively that large events play an important role in accelerating or changing ice behaviors there," Peng told the Science Magazine. "It's an ongoing study. We haven't finished the story yet."